Dodge has released a few interesting commercials for its Charger muscle car, somewhat prematurely pushing it as the antithesis of a robocar. Most amusing is the second ad which features an ugly car with a literal robot in the driver’s seat (something also seen in the Total Recall and I, Robot movies.) The first ad just has visuals of the car but actually mentions the Google car as one of the signs of increasing robot control. For some reason, the car, rather than the people behind it, is named the “leader of the human resistance.”

It’s easy to understand the sentiment behind these ads, particularly when you are trying to market a car as a powerful “man’s car” oriented to the thrill of driving. The people who want the car to drive itself are not like you, you want an exciting drive and this is the car for you, it says. (Other ads decry an online test drive, and cars that get lots of “boring” miles per gallon.)

The ad does pose an interesting question. When I talk, I often get people who say that they have no interest in a robocar (and that Americans won’t have interest in them) because they love to drive and would not give it up. I often ask back, “so do you love to commute?” It’s also clear from the example of New York City that Americans will certainly give up driving if it’s the right choice for their locale. People who grew up in L.A. don’t try to keep their car if they move to Manhattan, they do what makes sense for their new area.

Driving is fun, of course, particularly on an interesting road with a powerful car. Indeed, many find driving a stickshift even more fun in such circumstances, though they are almost gone from U.S. cars. (I’ve mostly owned stickshift cars though when I bought my most recent I ended up with an automatic where you can manually change the gears. But I find I don’t use the manual mode.) Being a passenger on windy roads is not nearly so much fun, and even makes many people a bit queasy, though this almost never happens to the driver even with the same moves.

Obviously I suspect the Dodge ad is wrong when it says that “robots will never take our cars.” But human driven cars will also exist for a long time, and not just in the muscle car market. Many people will enjoy — or even need — a car they can take control of when the road gets “interesting.” But in our ordinary driving, the road itself is rarely interesting. We may well take special trips where the software drives us to the fun road and we take over after that, though with a better safety system. On the other hand, when it comes to scenic drives, people will want to go slowly and be passengers, getting a chance to look out the windows and enjoy the view rather than concentrate on the road. We may see “tourist cars” in popular tourist spots which are either convertibles or have nearly transparent tops — reminding us perhaps of the bubble roof cars from the Jetsons — for those whose focus is on the view.

There will be a sector of the market that wholly buys into Dodge’s tongue-in-cheek message. I’m pretty confident in predicting that the opposite segment that embraces the technology will be more than large enough for it to find all the early adopters it needs. As people get used to the idea, it will then go mainstream, even if it never captures everybody.

Of course, I’m almost certain the Dodge Charger, like all other cars, is full of processors with tons of code. The fuel mixing system that gives it its power is computerized in a typical car. One technology “leading the resistance” against another.

This does mean a lot of changes for the automobile industry, as I wrote in my article on car design changes. Today a car’s price is remarkably correlated with its horsepower, which is part of the reason Dodge wants to advertise this way. Even when luxury is the real product, you will still find extra horsepower. This may change as people want comfort in their ordinary car, and only want horsepower in the vehicle they rent for the weekend.

It’s very common to use mobile phones for driving activities today. Many people even put in cell phone holders in their cars when they want to use the phones as navigation systems as well as make calls over a bluetooth. There’s even evidence that dashboard mounting reduces the distracted driving phenomenon associated with phones in cars.

Nokia and others are pushing one alternative for the cars that have dashboard screens. This is called “Terminal Mode” and is a protocol so the phone can make use of the display, buttons and touchscreens in the car. Putting the smarts in the phone and making the dash be the dumb peripheral is the right idea, since people upgrade phones frequently and cars not nearly so much. The terminal mode interface can be wireless so the phone does not have to be plugged in, though of course most people like to recharge phones while driving.

Terminal mode will be great if it comes, but it would be good to also push for a standard port on dashboards for mounting mobile phones. Today, most mobile phone holders either stick to the windshield with a suction cup, or clamp onto the vents of the air conditioner. A small port or perhaps flip out lever arm would be handy if standardized on dashboards. The lever arm would offer a standard interface for connecting a specific holder for the specific device. In addition, the port would offer USB wiring so that the holder could offer it to the phone. This would offer power at the very least but could also do data for terminal mode and some interfacing with other elements of the car, including the stereo system, or the onboard-diagnostics bus. Access to other screens in the back (for playing video) and to superior antennas might make sense. While many phones use their USB port to be a peripheral to a PC, some have “USB to go” which allows a device to be either master or peripheral, allowing more interesting functions.

Even with terminal mode, there could be value in having two screens, and more buttons, though of course apps would have to be developed to understand that. However, one simple thing is that a phone could run two apps at once on two screens (or even two apps at once on the larger screen of the car) which would actually be pretty handy.